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Atlas criticizes judges scoring of Canelo- Golovkin 2 fight

September 24th, 2018 - Comments Closed

By Sean Jones: Teddy Atlas says the judges gave Gennady Golovkin no credit for the jabbing he did in his rematch with Saul Canelo Alvarez, and he feels that they scored the fight based on the pressure the Mexican fighter was putting on Triple G rather than the incredible ring generalship the Kazakhstan fighter was showing.

Atlas disagrees with Canelo (50-1-2, 34 KOs) being given the 12 round majority decision in the rematch with GGG on September 15 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas Nevada. Atlas scored the fight 117-111, which is similar to how Boxing News 24 scored it.

“I had it 117-112. I had it for Golovkin,” Teddy Atlas said to Joe Rogan. “All week long I had picked Canelo to win. They [judges] didn’t give him credit for jabs. It’s like jabs don’t count no more. Judge nowadays, they just go down the easy route. They give it to who is aggressive. If a guy is walking forward and throwing punches, they’re favoring that guy, and there’s more to it than that. It’s supposed to be clean, harder, effective punches,” Atlas said.

I believe that Atlas is partially correct about the judges no longer giving fighters credit for throwing jabs. I think it depends on the name of the fighter that is throwing the jabs. If it’s an extremely popular A-side fighter like Floyd Mayweather Jr. throwing the jabs, then the judges obviously weigh the jabs more in my opinion. Mayweather was given a 12 round decision win over Canelo doing the same thing that Golovkin did in his two fights with him. Erislandy Lara and Golovkin jabbed Canelo just like Mayweather did, but the judges scored the fights against them. I don’ know if you can call that favoritism or what, but I seems like it.

”I saw for me to get it to 117-112, Golovkin controlling distance,” Atlas said. ”You want to use the word ring generalship. He was keeping he shorter man on the outside, catching him with the jab, making him earn his way in, making him pay the price to get in. Was the other guy Canelo landing the harder, cleaner body shots that you sometimes don’t get credit for? Yeah, he was. Like I sometimes say, he was putting water in the basement. But the jab suddenly didn’t count in a universe where he jab doesn’t mean anything, where we don’t want it to mean anything, where we want to give it to the aggressive guy, to the guy trying to get in there. A hook to the body is more important, but if the jabs outnumber the hooks to the body for many rounds, and the numbers are significant that it’s greater than, then you have to account for that. If the jabs are 20 jabs and two body shots, then I’m starting to say, we can’t forget the jabs, because the body punches got your attention and might have got you out of your seat a little bit,” Atlas said

The question would the jobs have still given Canelo the win if he was the one fighting like Golovkin in landing numerous head-snapping jabs, and hurting him twice in rounds 10 and 11? Would the judges have given the fight to Canelo if he had rallied and controlled the fight in the last six rounds the way that Golovkin did? It’s kind of hard not to imagine the judges failing to give Canelo the victory if he came on strong in the last half of the fight the way GGG did. The judges gave Canelo a draw in the first fight when he fought aggressively in the last three rounds. Even though Canelo appeared to have already lost eight rounds of the fight by the later rounds, the judges still gave him a draw.

Given the controversy surrounding the scoring for the first and second fights, there needs to be a third Canelo-GGG fight in order to clear up the controversy once and for all in the minds of the boxing fans.